


Sometimes Three

by andlightplay



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Crossdressing, F/M, Flogging, M/M, Pegging, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 23:24:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8773576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andlightplay/pseuds/andlightplay
Summary: Five kinky scenes from the Hamiltons' marriage, and one that is very much outside it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mapped](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Cynthia! It's only two weeks late!

**I**

“My dear, you are a vision,” Thomas says softly, stopped in the doorway and drinking her in.

“Am I?” Miranda says archly, fidgeting unnecessarily with the stiff jacket and fighting the urge to jiggle her foot, a bad habit her mother has been trying to train her out of for decades.

“Oh, absolutely,” Thomas says with feeling, finally coming into the room and shutting the door behind him. Miranda stands as he does so and tucks her hands behind her back like gentlemen do, remembering to square her shoulders and widen her stance a little with no skirts to hide her. She can’t say she misses them, exactly, though she does feel rather…exposed.

“May I see?” Thomas asks, twirling his finger, and Miranda obligingly turns a circle for him, much as she has done in the past to show off a new dress but slower, without the rustle and heavy swing of a skirt. “Oh yes, sweetheart, you look wonderful. Handsome, in fact.”

He’s smiling, warm and delighted, and Miranda crosses the remaining space between them, already feeling the way the breeches make her stride out rather than demurely tiptoe. It’s…rather freeing, actually.

Thomas’ arm loops familiarly around her waist as she reaches him, and he kisses her readily, heatedly, his compliments clearly genuine. Not that Miranda doubted him, but she imagines that not every man would be so pleased to find his wife in menswear, even if he had been the one to suggest it.

“However did you arrange it?” Thomas asks, his hands at her waist, his forehead against hers, unable to resist another kiss at the end of the sentence so that Miranda’s reply is somewhat delayed.

“I made a few discreet enquiries about clothing for the younger, slender gentleman,” she finally gets to say, laughing a little as she does because Thomas’ mouth is at her throat, above her neckcloth. “Jane was really very good about it, and never asked any questions; we should give her a raise.”

Thomas makes an agreeable noise, his hands sliding down to her hips and over her arse, which he is able to squeeze much more firmly and easily than when she is wearing a dress. Miranda is rapidly losing her affinity for skirts. It’s easier, too, for her to slot a leg in between Thomas’ like this, and really feel the hot and heavy weight of his cock without all her petticoats in the way.

“Here,” Thomas says, muffled against her mouth, and walks her backwards until she feels the wall behind her. His hand drops down between her legs, fingers pressing up against her cunt, the solid heel of his hand a perfect pressure against her clit. It is rather marvellous to have so much freedom of movement, without the constant incriminating tangle and rustle of skirts as she ruts shamelessly against his hand.

When he draws it away Miranda opens her mouth to complain, but only gets as far as the indrawn breath before Thomas has sunk to his knees and pressed his mouth to her, hot through the fabric as his fingers work open the fastenings. Miranda hears her breathing catch and stutter, and she feels Thomas grin just before he tugs her breeches down and truly puts his mouth on her. Both his hands come back to settle at her hips as he focuses his attentions on her clit, tongue feathering at it as though it were a cock, the same little lapping motion Miranda has used on him. The idea has her arching her hips towards his mouth, stunned that he been paying such attention, and half-wishing that she did have such an appendage so that she could truly experience what he’s apparently learnt.

Thomas groans approvingly and leans into it, his hands coming round to brace her thighs so that he can bury himself more fully between them and she can fuck herself against his mouth, his tongue. She comes easily like that, Thomas licking eagerly along the length of her and suckling at her clit until she pushes him gently away, and when she opens her eyes she finds him shoving a hand into his own breaches, too impatient to wait. She runs her fingers though his hair and grabs herself handfuls to pull and he strokes himself, his cock flushed and already wet, and he comes with his mouth pressed to her bare hip, leaving pink toothmarks behind.

* * *

  **II**

“I feel like an idiot,” James complains, scowling, and Miranda tuts and makes a minute adjustment to the way the corset lies at his waist. “How do you breathe in this?”

“Shallowly,” she advises, standing back to take him in. Under her gaze, as she knew he would, he draws himself up and curls his hands behind his back, and the silk fabric pulls tight across his chest. “Careful not to burst that please, Lieutenant. It’ll cost you quite dear.”

She watches his stomach flatten as he obediently tries to breath less deeply, and smiles. Even with his hair loose around his shoulders James will never make a convincing woman, the breadth of his shoulders too wide and the flat planes of his chest too unforgiving, but still there is something to the pale sheen of the fabric against his freckles, and the contrast of satin and bows placed so close to solid muscle. Petticoats would have been a step too far for the poor Lieutenant’s sensibilities, so he is barefoot in his own breeches, the pale silk of which does go quite pleasingly with the corset anyway.

“Thomas! You may come in now!” she calls, and Thomas unlatches the adjoining door and peeks through, gleeful as a child at his own birthday.

“My dear, you look ravishing,” he says cheerfully, and James’ scowl returns, though muted a little. “Though you’re still standing to attention like a Navy man, which I don’t believe that stay was made to endure. Here.”

He steps around behind James and puts both hands flat on his shoulders, gently urging him to relax them. His hands slip down and apparently fasten around James’ wrists, teasing them away from his spine and down to his sides. James huffs out a breath and the corset strains with it and then settles, and Thomas puts his chin on James’ shoulder and beams.

“There, much better.”

James’ pale skin shows every flush - something that Miranda and Thomas are both continually delighted by - and it pinks up now, a wash of colour across his cheeks. “What now, then?” he asks, almost plaintive, and Thomas hums and shifts his hands to James’ waist, tugging him gently back against him and looping his arms around him, keeping him there.

“Well, since Miranda has spent so long lacing you into it, I don’t think we’ll take it off again just yet,” he says thoughtfully, his hands stroking down over the material, “especially as it does suit you so.” His hands hit the end of the corset panels and continue smoothing down over James’ breaches. “But that doesn’t mean that _other_ things can’t come off.”

“Thomas, I don’t-” James says helplessly, flicking pleading eyes towards Miranda, who merely favours him with an indulgent smile, “-know if it could stand up to, to any kind of serious punishment-” Thomas’ palms are still smoothing up and down his thighs, creeping ever closer to his cock, currently covered by the central panel. “I don’t want to break it,” he finishes, looking to Miranda.

“Then you’ll have to stand up straight, won’t you, James?” Miranda answers, making her way to the bed and arranging the pillows to her satisfaction. She does away with her own loosened stays, petticoats and shift, and by the time she is able to give the pair of them her full attention again James’ flush has spread down over his chest, beautifully framed by the pale silk of the corset neckline. One of Thomas’ hands is teasing at his nipples through the fabric, which Miranda knows from experience is not so thick as to inhibit sensation, but just too thick to make it no more than a torment; the other is spread over the central corset panel, behind which James’ cock must be straining for touch, plumped and aching.

“Tell me how you feel, James,” she prompts, and James makes a low noise and wets his lips with his tongue.

“I- I’d really love to touch myself, since Thomas _refuses to do so_. I can feel him ramrod against my back-” James rolls his hips back, as if saying that reminded him that he can move, and Thomas groans, “-and I would love it almost as much if he would fucking do something with it-”

“Such as?” Miranda purrs, sliding her own fingers down over her stomach to her cunt, and James eyes follow them hungrily.

“Honestly, at least if he fucked me I’d have a chance of coming some time this week,” James bites out, and Thomas’ mouth closes on his neck.

“So, what would you like him to do?” Miranda asks breathlessly, teasing herself with her fingertips, and James closes his eyes and tips his head back against Thomas’.

“I’d like him to take my fucking trousers off and put his cock in my arse, _please_ ,” he says, and Thomas’ hands drop instantly to his waist and reach around, working open his breeches and shucking them down his thighs.

James’ breath hitches as his cock is freed, and Thomas releases him just long enough to scramble out of his own clothing. James spends the time watching Miranda, who spreads her legs wider and moans a little louder for him.

She sees the moment Thomas finishes undressing and comes back, because at the first touch of Thomas’ skin James shudders and arches back into him. The corset creaks warningly, and James gasps as it pulls too tight against the angle of his body, restricting his air until he straightens again. Thomas murmurs something to him, and James reaches an arm back to grab at his hair as Thomas anchors both hands on James’ hips and rocks himself forward.

“James,” Miranda reminds him, and James slits his eyes open and swallows hard.

“He’s not fucking me, even though I fucking asked him to, he’s just, ah, rubbing his cock against my arse and I can feel - he’s wet - _god_ , I want to just, fucking, shove it in anyway, _fuck_ , Thomas-”

Miranda comes then, at the thought of it and the similar ache in her own cunt, watching them. She knows they both watch her, knows that Thomas thrusts a little harder and James grinds back a little more desperately, and knowing that she keeps rubbing her clit and fucking herself with her fingers and comes again, her own surprised curse bitten off.

“Fuck, Miranda,” James says, low and of his own volition this time, “I wish I could come like that, I’m so fucking close but I- Thomas is going to, I can feel it, and perhaps in the wetness of it he’ll just…slip inside, I need- I want him to fuck me, it’s the only thing I- I’m fucking _desperate_ for it, hotter than a whore, and I- _fuck_ , _god_ \- Thomas, ah-”

Thomas comes, hearing James babble about how much he wants his cock and imagining fucking him as smoothly and easily as he does Miranda, and Miranda watches James, flushed and sweaty and frustrated.

“You’ve done so well, James,” she says quietly as Thomas regains his senses and flexes his grip on James’ hips, squeezing before he lets go and begins to unlace the corset. James’ eyes are fixed on Miranda as she stands from the bed and comes close to kiss him, and the moment she feels the corset shift and then fall away she drops to her knees. Even the anticipation has James twitching, and when she takes him into her mouth she feels the way it ripples through him, the way his knees almost buckle. She only has to suck a few times before James gasps her name and comes.

* * *

  **III**

“You stand like this,” James says, warm against Miranda’s back and guiding her stance, her arms. “Swing from the shoulder, but let it flow. Look,” his hand tugs her wrist backwards and up, and then guides her arm down in an easy sweeping arc. The lashes hit the pillow with a muffled _smack_ , and James makes a pleased noise. “There. Now try again, by yourself.”

Miranda concentrates, draws in a breath, exhales and brings her arm down, and hits the pillow a little off to the side but still fairly central.

“Good,” James says by her ear, and perhaps it’s heat of him behind her, or the knowledge of what’s to come, that has her warming at the praise. He takes the whip from her, and extends a freckled forearm, turned so his paler inner wrist faces her. The motion of his other arm is violent as he brings the lash down across his own skin, and it cracks like a horsewhip, but even with all that his skin barely even pinks. “You see? You can’t hurt me.” He includes Thomas in the statement, where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and watching them at their practise, still looking faintly misgiving.

“Not with _this_ one,” Miranda points out, indicating the heavier, paler whip on the bed, and James huffs a laugh.

“Even with that you couldn’t do more than welt me, I promise. Your chief concern is not punishment in any case, and you don’t want to hurt me, and besides which, Thomas will be here to oversee. I have seen men take a dozen lashes from the cat wielded by the bo’sun without bleeding excessively, so I honestly don’t believe I have anything to fear from you and a suede plaything.” His tone softens. “Miranda, if you truly don’t want to-”

“But you want me to,” Miranda replies, weighing her feelings even as she says it. She trusts James, of course, and if he says she can’t hurt him then she believes him, but all the same, the human body is fragile, and one wrong blow could lead to awkward questions at best. She knows Thomas wants no part in it, but such is his concern that he will stay nearby with cold water and soft gauze and a soothing lineament, and assure himself of James’ well-being once they are done. “And if it really is as safe as you say, then…well, I will admit to a certain curiosity.”

“Thomas can count,” James says decisively, turning to him. “Twenty lashes with the deerskin, and ten with the suede. After that, he may stop us if he wishes.”

“I still don’t quite understand why you would want this,” Thomas says, running his hands over the curled lashes of the suede whip. “Why anyone would want to. But if it is what you wish, my dear…”

“It is,” James says gently, going over to him and cupping his chin in one broad hand. “Thomas, I’m asking for this of my own free will, I swear. It’s…pleasurable, the sting and the ache of it, and done without malice it’s…different, an expression of trust, and care, and…love.”

Thomas’ hand comes up to cover James’, and he turns to press a kiss to the palm. “Then, my dear, how can I refuse you it?”

James’ smile is a soft and pleased thing, and the kiss he returns lands on Thomas’ mouth. Thomas catches him for another, deeper and more heated, and then lets him go, fussing with the bandages.

“Take your shirt off, then, Lieutenant,” Miranda orders, and James strips cleanly out of it and tosses it to the floor, moving to the end of the bed and grasping a bedpost in each hand. His shoulders flex with the motion, his back thickly freckled and some shades paler than his arms and neck.

“Aim for my upper back, rather than my lower,” he advises, and Miranda makes an affirmative sound and gets herself into the stance he showed her. She meets Thomas’ eyes over James’ shoulder, and raises her arm.

“One,” Thomas says, his eyes fixing on James. Again comes the terrifying _crack_ , but James doesn’t even flinch and Miranda can find no trace of the blow on his skin. She raises her arm again.

By the dozenth lash she believes she might be seeing the barest pink glow to the skin, but her aim is not so precise that all her blows have landed in the exact same place, and indeed once she almost missed entirely. James is silent, his head hanging down, occasionally exhaling a little more forcefully with certain blows. Thomas is watching him intently, but his shoulders have relaxed, and his frown is all but gone.

On the twenty-first she changes whips, Thomas silently handing her the suede one when she proffers the deerskin, and after running it through her fingers to feel the weight of it she flicks it at James’ back, a half-strength trial run. It catches him on the ribs and he jerks, muscles rippling, and the noise he makes is startled and pleased.

“Don’t count that,” Miranda says to Thomas, and gets herself into position for a proper swing. This time the lash lands properly and hard, and James’ fingers tighten their hold on the bedposts, the breath bursting out of him in a sound very similar to the one he makes when he is first breached with a finger, low and hungry.

After ten blows his back is striped with pink markings, bright against the freckles, and Thomas calls a halt. “James? How do you feel?” he asks intently, and James lifts his head with what seems to be some effort.

“Warm,” he says drowsily, and then, blinking further back to himself, “I would like more.”

“Would you, indeed,” Miranda answers, coming closer to tap him on the shoulderblade with the coiled whip. She trails it down over his back, and watches the muscles jump.

“Yes,” James says clearly. “I- yes, please.”

“Well, since you ask so politely,” Miranda concedes, and steps back to her mark.

Thomas takes up his count again, and James’ back grows steadily pinker. The regular smack of suede to skin is not dissimilar to the sounds of skin on skin, and certainly the noises James makes are the same, hitched and gasping. Miranda has become better at placing her blows, and many fall overlapping one another, drawing more sharp little sounds from James.

At forty Thomas stops her again, with a meaningful look at James, who is rather slumped into his bracing arms and panting. The cessation of blows seems to rouse him though, and he raises his head like a man woken from sleep.

“More,” he says thickly. “Let me…more.”

“Not tonight, sweetness,” Miranda says gently, after exchanging another look with Thomas. She drops the whip onto the bed and comes to stroke James’ hair, which is still in its queue but curling and darkened with sweat. He leans into it like a pet and she tugs at it a little, which makes him cant his head back into it with a moan, which gets louder when the movement disturbs his back. “There, Thomas will see to you now,” Miranda soothes, and Thomas brings the bowl of water over and carefully presses the wet cloth to the nearest pink stripe. James hisses and drops his head again, knuckles briefly whitening and the bedposts creaking under his hands, but then he relaxes.

While Thomas tends to James, Miranda tidies away the whips and goes to settle herself on the bed with certain suspicions, which are confirmed when she comes round to James’ front and finds his cock hard in his breeches, and the pale material blotted with an obvious wet spot. She lets Thomas finish his ministrations before she presses her palm to James’ erection, and James shudders and arches forward into her touch.

“Well James, it would appear than you certainly did enjoy that,” Miranda murmurs, and strokes him through the material, letting him fuck into her hand until she can feel the twitch and pulse of him coming, marked by the low groan that catches in his throat.

* * *

  **IV**

The candlelight is soft and warm and lends its glow beautifully to the naked planes and arcs of Thomas’ back, gilding his hair and adding an almost otherworldly quality to him, and to James beneath him, his hair lit copper where it falls molten over his face. The light dips and wavers and slides silken over their skin as they move together, Thomas murmuring low encouragement and James confining himself to hitched breath and the clench of his fists in the sheets.

Miranda runs an idle hand up the shaft of the leather cock strapped between her legs, almost as if it were her own to touch as she watched them. She’s already come three times tonight thanks to fingers and mouths, so the edge is taken off her hunger and she can appreciate the picture the pair of them make without necessarily needing to touch herself, although the tight grip of James’ hands around the sheets and the way his hips jerk when Thomas’ thrusts hit right are compelling.

Thomas himself is always a vision, even in this, his hair a crown of gold and his eyes dark and fathom-deep as he whispers praise and direction into James’ ear. Miranda doesn’t begrudge them their privacy; she knows how filthy Thomas’ tongue can be if he wishes, and she has enough memories of other nights in this bed to sustain her. She knows Thomas down to his bones; knows the way his hands feel curled on her hips, knows the feel of his cock hot and thick inside her, knows the way he can talk through his orgasm with only a little breathlessness and the barest hesitancy, but falls immediately to endearments afterwards. Indeed, she rather enjoys seeing these things from the outside; the flex of muscle as he drives himself to completion and the gentling rhythm of his hips as he eases through orgasm and past it; the way he turns his face into James’ neck and scatters kisses over the skin; the way James shudders at the praise that accompanies them, hips working helplessly back against Thomas’ until Thomas strokes a hand down his flank and gentles him so he can pull out.

Thomas flops down onto the mattress and laughs a little, craning his head back to seek Miranda’s eyes. “There Miranda, sweetheart, he’s all wet and waiting for you. Don’t keep him too long; he’s been so good for me.”

“I’ll give him everything he needs,” Miranda assures both of them, shifting further down the bed, “the moment he asks it of me.”

“Oh fuck Miranda, don’t expect eloquence from me right now,” James pants, lifting his head so his eyes catch the light and burn sea-green. “Please, please, just fucking fuck me.”

“Oh I don’t know, that was marvellously eloquent in it’s own way,” Miranda teases, settling herself on her knees behind him running both palms flat down his back, feeling the muscles shift under her touch. One hand she anchors on his hip, likely right over where Thomas’ had been; the other she uses to guide the leather cock into him, one smooth easy stroke.

James makes a strangled noise and arches back into it, and Thomas’ hand appears, running soothingly up and down James’ nearest arm. “Alright?” Miranda asks, rolling her hips experimentally, and in answer James rocks back against her, fucking himself onto the toy.

The truly delightful thing about Miranda’s cock is that it is separate from her, and therefore she can fuck James for hours without becoming any less hard. Often the base of it rubs against her clit, adding an extra layer of pleasure, but she gets quite enough satisfaction out of James caught beneath her, trembling and wanton, rutting back against her but obedient to their commandment not to touch himself. The heat of his skin, the burnished bronze of his hair in the candlelight, the slick wet sound of him getting fucked, and the increasingly needy noises he makes, first under his breath and then louder, until he’s begging.

“Is there something you want, sweetheart?” Miranda asks, snapping her hips harder, and James’ shoulders flex as his fingers dig into the mattress.

“I’m- please, Miranda, let me come, I need…I need to, please-”

“Well, you have been wonderfully patient,” Miranda concedes, glancing down to Thomas. “What do you think, dearest? Does James deserve release?”

“He has been a marvel,” Thomas says warmly, managing to stretch up and stoke a couple of fingers down James’ cheek. “Of course he deserves it.”

“You have been so very good,” Miranda agrees, slipping a hand around to brush against James’ stomach, which quivers and jumps under her touch. “Be a good boy for me now then, and come for me.” James whines, shoulders bunching as he grabs at the sheets for more leverage to slam himself back onto the toy, thighs tensing. “That’s it,” Miranda croons, dropping her hand down the barest inch or two so that her fingers brush the damp head of his cock. She drags her open palm over it, as light as she can manage with the erratic pace of her thrusts, and James makes a relieved, broken noise and obeys her, come spilling warm over her hand and dripping down onto the bed.

He shudders through the aftershocks, hips still jolting back into Miranda’s strokes, and Miranda obligingly fucks him through it until he falls shakily still, gasping like a man resurfaced. A final roll if her hips has him twitching as if burned, and Miranda uses the natural course of the motion to withdraw, allowing James to finally let his arms give out and topple bonelessly forwards onto the mattress. 

* * *

  **V**

They find James in the bath still, eyes closed and head tilted back, his hair loose and slicked wet against his skull. The beard is also dark with water, sending rivulets down his jaw. His eyes open as the door closes behind them and crinkle as he smiles, warm and wide and bright.

Thomas crosses the distance between them in three long strides and kisses him soundly, not at all concerned for the water dripping onto his shirt and jacket when James’ arms come up to hold him in place. Miranda gives them a moment and makes sure that the door is well secured behind them, a piece of paranoia she regrets but has recently come to believe is necessary.

“Miranda,” James says eventually, and extends an arm to her, the other still loosely clutching Thomas’ shirt. Miranda comes gladly into his embrace, and bends to take his mouth, one hand cupping the back of his neck, his hair warm and sleek under her palm.

“We’ve missed you,” she says softly when she pulls away, and James hums contentedly, watching them both with clear sea-green eyes. Thomas’ arm joins James’ around her waist, and his hand settles on top of James’ on his shirtfront, fingers weaving together. “And since you’re already unclothed, will you be coming to bed?”

“God, yes,” James says fervently, standing fast enough to slosh the bath water. His face is now tanned to several shades darker than his body, his figure a little leaner from months at sea. His cock is already at half-mast, and Thomas reaches out to wrap a hand around it, stroking it to full hardness while James breathes shallowly, stomach fluttering and thighs trembling.

“Has anyone touched you, since we last did?” Thomas murmurs, and James shakes his head.

“Ah, no. And I, I haven’t even-”

“No? Oh James, what an unlooked for treat. How good you’ve been,” Thomas says warmly, and James’ skin, already flushed from the warm water, pinks further. Thomas glances over at Miranda and, understanding, she extricates herself and steps around behind James, just as Thomas folds himself down to his knees and takes James’ cock into his mouth. James shudders, his free hand grasping uselessly at thin air before coming to land in Thomas’ hair. Miranda settles herself close behind him, her hands on his hips, steadying him. She would love to press herself against his back, but trying to get watermarks out of this satin gown would be difficult, not to mention difficult to explain.

“Thomas,” James is gasping, the hand that was clenched in Thomas’ shirt moving to his cheek, feeling the shape of his cock through the skin. “ _Thomas_.”

“Are you that close already, sweetheart?” Miranda croons, and James’ hips twitch forward. “Well that’s to be expected, if you’ve gone so long without release. How very disciplined of you, Lieutenant. Were there nights where you lay awake, hard and aching, thinking of us but denying yourself? Did you imagine us with you, touching you, fucking you?” James groans, low in his throat. “Was that a yes? And still you didn’t touch yourself, didn’t wake up from pleasant dreams, all wet and satisfied?”

“No,” James says, choked. “No, not even once.”

“Oh James,” Miranda breathes. “How good you’ve been. But you’re home now, and you can come if you want to. Thomas wants you to, you know how much he loves sucking your cock.” James’ hips snap forward, and Thomas sways easily with the motion, looking up at him with desire-dark eyes. His throat bobs, jaw rippling, and James’ breath catches, stutters. “There, you see?” Miranda continues. “Go on then, come for us, James.”

She can see the way James fights it, some masculine urge to hold himself back longer, but he’s denied himself too long and Thomas’ tongue is too clever, and shortly James is fucking Thomas’ mouth in short, jerky strokes, legs quaking. Thomas closes his eyes and sucks him dry, finally releasing his cock when it’s softening, slick and wet.

“Go and lie on the bed, sweetheart,” Miranda instructs James, patting his hip to seal the order, and both of them watch James wobble his way over to the bed and collapse face-first. She comes round the bath to Thomas, who briefly presses his face into her skirts before he accepts her offer and a hand to help him stand.

They undress each other with the ease of long familiarity, aware that James is watching them from the bed. Thomas flips her shift up and gets a hand between her legs, pressing his forehead to hers as he strokes along her cunt and dips two fingers inside her, his thumb rolling over her clit. Miranda clutches at him, hips rolling into his hand, and comes suddenly and forcefully, knees weakening. Her orgasm rolls over her in waves, and she can feel Thomas smiling as she continues to rock against his fingers.

Once the ripples finally die away she kisses him, shifting to nudge their hips together and feeling how hard he is. “Later, dearest,” he says against her lips, directing her towards the bed too, and Miranda goes, shedding her shift and settling up against the pillows. James crawls up into her lap, dotting kisses to her thighs, and Miranda strokes his hair, watching Thomas.

“I’ve yet to see a more beautiful tableau,” Thomas says quietly, hesitating in stripping out of his breeches.

“I will have, once you come and join us,” Miranda counters, and Thomas grins and finally divests himself of his remaining clothes. He leans over the end of the bed, one hand curling over James’ calf, and presses a kiss to the crook of James’ knee. James’ twitches, ticklish, and cranes his head back to see what Thomas is up to. Thomas shifts a little higher, leaving kisses up over James’ thigh.

James’ eyes are wide and very green. “Thomas…”

“Hush, dearest,” Thomas says conspiratorially, and brushes his mouth over the juncture of James’ arse and thigh.

Miranda smooths her hands over James’ hair and meets Thomas’ eyes; he smiles at her, mischievous as a boy, and leans in to dot a kiss on each arse cheek. James blinks at him, still uncertain, and Thomas slides his hands up James’ legs, spreading him open.

“Thomas,” James says, wavering and disbelieving, and Thomas lowers his head and licks right over his rim. The noise James makes sounds punched out of him, and Thomas does it again, a firm pass of his tongue. James’ back arches slightly, thighs tensing, and he buries his face in Miranda’s lap, cheeks hot.

Miranda pets his hair soothingly, privately amused that of all the things they’ve done together, this is what has James embarrassed. Thomas settles in, lowering his mouth to the skin and pressing harder with his tongue, no longer confining himself to individual strokes but keeping up a constant pressure, tongue a wicked and twisting thing. James makes small, helpless noises, muffled into Miranda’s skin as though he’s ashamed, his body betraying him as his hips hitch back into Thomas’ mouth.

Slowly, gradually, Miranda coaxes James into overcoming his embarrassment, turning his face away from the shelter of her lap and letting the noises he’s making escape into the air so Thomas can hear. Some if it is swearing, simple and blunt, but the rest is a wonderful symphony of desire and desperation, moans and gasps and other half-sounds, low and bitten off. Somehow it blends perfectly with the obscene noises Thomas is making at his work, slick and wet and filthy. If James wasn’t so absorbed in his own pleasure, or so deserving of it after so long at sea, Miranda would have him between her thighs in turn.

She can tell by the way James’ hips shift, back towards Thomas and down against the bed, that he’s hard again, and she reaches down to touch his cheek where it’s pillowed on his arms, tilting his chin up enough to slip her thumb between his teeth. He closes his mouth around it immediately, tongue feathering over the pad of her thumb in much the same way Miranda imagines that Thomas’ is at his rim. Sadly, the noises James had been making are now muted, but having something else to focus on seems to have added a new urgency to his movements, and he is now very much rubbing himself against the bedclothes.

The second time he comes it’s almost wrung out of him, a full-body shudder that has Miranda pressing his tongue flat with her thumb, feeling it flutter, and Thomas once again having to ride out the bucking of James’ hips, which he does with equal ease. When he draws away he leaves James a sprawled and panting wreck, barely willing to roll over away from the wet spot he has just created and staring dazed at the ceiling. Miranda slips her thumb free and presses it to his lips, amused.

“Alright, sweetheart?”

“Mmm,” James says drowsily, eyes slitting half-shut, and musters the effort to kiss her thumb. Miranda turns back to Thomas, still smiling, and holds out her arms.

Thomas crawls into them with no further prompting, and Miranda nudges him down onto the bed and climbs astride him in one motion, taking the barest second to settle herself before she takes his cock in hand and guides him inside her. Thomas’ expression is almost as enraptured as James’ as he gazes up at her, and when she leans down to balance herself, Miranda sets a palm over his heart.

The pace she sets is rather punishing, but they are both of them hungry enough for it, Thomas slicked wet just by his enjoyment of what he has been doing to James, and Miranda equally so, though she at least has come once already. Thomas’ hands are at her waist, pulling her down to meet his thrusts, and she rolls her hips, guiding him where she wants him.

Thomas comes first, with a groan that catches in his throat, but the ragged, instinctive rhythm of his orgasm is so perfect that she urges him to extend it past his own pleasure until she comes too, making Thomas’ fingers bite into her skin as she shivers and clenches around his softening, over-sensitive cock. He’s perfectly happy for her to drape herself across his chest though, afterwards, and James stirs himself enough to come and curl up on her other side, his arm reaching over her to rest on Thomas’ stomach, and Thomas’ fingers once again coming up to lace through his.

* * *

**I**

“Your hair’s getting long again,” Miranda observes idly over the rim of the wineglass, and James grunts, running a self-conscious hand through it and freeing it from its tie. It tumbles down almost to his shoulders, coarsened by salt and curling slightly, russet in the firelight although the relentless sun has scorched it to something nearer brown.

“Here,” he says, after a moment, retrieving a knife from somewhere about his person and holding it out to her, handle first. She shouldn’t be surprised; Captain Flint has knives like a hedgehog has spines. “Can you-?”

“I’m still not a barber,” she reminds him, but she’s already standing. When she gathers the locks of it in her fingers she can feel the knots and tangles put there by salt and sea air, the constant exposure too much to combat even with constant brushing and care, years and lifetimes away from the heavy shining fall of dark copper he used to ruefully pull back into a military queue of a morning. The cut strands fall to the floor at her feet, curving a little, reminding her once again of the single lock she keeps tucked away in her chest, taken in secret from the floor the first time James had asked her to do this and bound with his discarded ribbon.

She doesn’t miss the way James tilts his head back into her hands, baring his throat, or the way he goes still when she presses the knife blade to his newly-shorn nape once she’s done. She drags the blade carefully round to rest under his jaw, and feels him swallow, slow and easy.

“Take your coat off,” she says, unable to stop herself holding her breath even though her voice comes out steady. There’s a precarious moment where she still isn’t quite sure how he’ll react, if she’s truly read this right, but then she feels it tip in her favour. James’ eyes flutter closed, and the arch of his neck lifts closer to the blade as he shifts forward enough to slide the coat off his shoulders.

Miranda can’t lie and say she isn’t in favour of the idea of cutting James’ shirt off him, and forcing him to stay still while she does it lest she slice him to ribbons too, but fabric is expensive and she knows she’d feel like it was something of a waste afterwards so she merely uses the knife to indicate what she wants unfastened next, dragging the blade down his arms and over his chest and pricking him with the point if he’s too slow. Finally she rests it under his chin, a hairsbreadth from his beating pulse, and watches the blade bob as he swallows, head tilted up.

“Go to the chest,” she says, and sees the way his shoulders twitch, stomach tensing as his breath catches. “Fetch me the whip.”

Thomas’ ghost followed them to Nassau long before the news of his death reached them, and never is he more palpable than in the bedroom. Yet at the same time his absence there is too keenly felt, and the siren song of it drives them to ever-greater lengths to stop up their ears and turn away from the tidal pull of it. This time it is James, begging for more even as his skin stripes red; it is Miranda digging her fingers into those marks as he fucks her, and James biting at her throat with hard, feral teeth.

She comes from the Bacchanal frenzy of it, once and then again when she feels the way James shudders when she grazes her fingertips down along the cleft of his arse. He fucks her through it and then pulls out, bracing himself above her and gritting out a “please”, and she wets her fingers between her legs before she presses the tips inside him, two at once and unforgiving. It’s not enough to properly ease the way but this isn’t a night for gentleness, and though James makes a strangled noise and trembles above her he also arches into it.

She doesn’t fuck him, exactly, because the angle is awkward and it’s really too dry, but she does tease him with the possibility and the force of it, and he comes hard enough to spatter her chest, though he apologises immediately afterwards. Miranda primly informs him that she accepts his apology, and then when she’s got up to clean herself off and inspect the purpling bitemark at the junction of her shoulder, she turns back to the bed and sees clearly what she has done to his back.

Where once there were carefully-placed pink stripes there are now criss-crossing red welts. Some are beaded with blood; one or two others are leaking it in thin trickles.

Miranda feels a moment of…chagrin, not that she would do this to another (after all, James had asked for it and more besides), but because she knows what Thomas’ reaction would have been, and it hurts all the more that he isn’t even there to have it. She pulls on her shift and robe and goes to get some water and a cloth; perhaps she _should_ have cut James’ shirt off him, then she could have used it for bandages.

“James, I need to tend to your back,” she says when she returns, and James makes a vague, assenting noise into the pillows. The first touch of the cloth has him starting violently up from the bed though, and almost pitching Miranda and the bowl of water onto the floor. “I did tell you,” she admonishes, while he swears and rhetorically demands to know what the fuck she’s doing, glaring at her as though she had injured him unprovoked. “Now settle down and hold still.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _"The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three."_  
>  \- Alexandre Dumas
> 
> For those interested in, uh, visuals, James' corset looks like [this](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/mentionablesltd/23651761/5117/5117_320.jpg).
> 
> I also feel like I should note here that the flogging stuff is...not particularly good kink etiquette, either time, and James was lucky that this was about porn and not the many ways inexperienced whipping could go wrong. Everything I know about flogging I learned from the [Kink Wiki](http://kink-wiki.dreamwidth.org/920.html), and linked [Flogging 101](http://web.archive.org/web/20090625044131/http://no.place.like.home.mindspring.com/abbot/articles/jl980105.htm) in particular.


End file.
